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I should have loved biology too

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Re: I should have loved biology too

#141

Post by girvo »

gh0stcat wrote: post #111
girvo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much a tangent, but I think it's nearly certain that "segway" will end up overtaking "segue" as the predominant spelling for the word that is defined as: "to make a transition without interruption from one activity, topic, scene, or part to another" The "mistake" happens so often, partially because "segway" is a much more straightforward spelling if one has only heard the word said aloud, that I think it…

This is an absurd take. We should not bend language around ignorance. There is a beauty to effort. Please take a second to explore this for yourself.

I passed no judgement for or against, merely discussed that it was likely to happen.

I suggest you yourself take a second and explore why you think being smarmy on the internet is a way of getting people to agree with you.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#142

Post by ern »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #118
ern wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can really relate to your experience, even though mine was from a parent's perspective rather than as a teacher. I found a similar thing when tutoring one of my children in trigonometry. The way the material was being presented in school didn't click with him, but astonishingly, despite having studied it decades ago both at school and university, explaining it to him, it finally made sense to me . The unit circle d…

> I also think this is where things like intergenerational math phobia come from: (elementary) teachers who don't grasp core concepts, are scared off, and can't help their own students, creating an ongoing cycle. I hope you appreciate my addition of the other common path of math phobia.

Absolutely, I do appreciate that addition — I definitely had teachers like that.

It’s probably why, when I got to university and tackled subjects like probability theory, discrete math, and theoretical CS, I did extremely well — they weren’t reliant on the shaky algebra and trig foundation I had from school. Once the focus shifted to logic and conceptual thinking, without the baggage of poorly taught fundamentals, everything clicked

Re: I should have loved biology too

#143

Post by ricardo81 »

diatone wrote: post #113
ricardo81 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is it a coincidence that a majority of programmers tend to fall into the INTJ bracket?

The criticisms shared by GP are that MBTI is unscientific; ie: unclear or hard to disprove. There’s a funny irony that you’re using a rhetorical device, as opposed to a rigorous scientific methodology, to try and navigate that criticism.

I don't see how, or at least that much. Language is merely a construct to describe things.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#144

Post by ern »

1auralynn wrote: post #39

The field of biology was created by people who love to classify/name things. This has resulted in what we have now: A subject where the prerequisite to understanding is the ability to read long passages of text littered with jargon and visualize what that might represent. Even if everyone's reading skills were where they should be, the second part is not a super common skillset. It's one of the reasons why I work in…

The use of latin doesn't help either. "Cytoplasmic net" (or better yet "plasma net") is a lot easier to understand, visualise and remember than "endplasmic reticulum".

Re: I should have loved biology too

#145

Post by Fomite »

westurner wrote: post #9
Fomite wrote: post #4

I should write a blog post entitled "I should have loved computer science"

Do you do bioinformatics? Bioinformatics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics Health informatics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_informatics

I'm a computational epidemiologist.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#146

Post by globular-toast »

I hated biology in school too. I wasn't interested in any of the memory tests. Still got the top grade, but dropped it when I could.

Later I got a job in bioinformatics. I worked on virus genomics. Definitely recommend viruses (specifically RNA viruses) because it's all the cool stuff without memorising bits of a flower etc.

Biology is a huge field, though. I can't criticise the way it was taught because I have no idea how to do it better. Not everyone is into genomics.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#147

Post by [deleted] »

nightpool wrote: post #77
slicktux wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the whole teaching the history of computers is a big failure at an attempt to Segway into computer organization and architecture. Nonetheless, I get what is happening. If it’s a pure Computer programming class then the goal maybe to have them understand the “basics”…like what is the hard drive vs RAM (memory allocation) or what is a transistor (Boolean logic) and what is a punch card (mnemonics and abstractio…

(Unless you're riding a motorized vehicle, the word is segue, not Segway)

[deleted]

Re: I should have loved biology too

#148

Post by milesrout »

girvo wrote: post #110
nightpool wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Unless you're riding a motorized vehicle, the word is segue, not Segway)

This is very much a tangent, but I think it's nearly certain that "segway" will end up overtaking "segue" as the predominant spelling for the word that is defined as: "to make a transition without interruption from one activity, topic, scene, or part to another" The "mistake" happens so often, partially because "segway" is a much more straightforward spelling if one has only heard the word said aloud, that I think it…

It will likely end up like many other more phonetic spellings: an indicator of ignorance, but more acceptable in America than elsewhere.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#149

Post by milesrout »

abletonlive wrote: post #114
gh0stcat wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absurd take. We should not bend language around ignorance. There is a beauty to effort. Please take a second to explore this for yourself.

Actually it's not an absurd take at all. The absurd take is that we "should not bend language around ignorance." That's precisely how language changes over time. Language is not a strict set of rules. It's based on understanding and consensus, so sometimes things that are "wrong" do end up being accepted. I suggest this as a great introduction into what languages are and how they evolve over time https://www.amazon.c…

Most mistakes remain mistakes, and do not become part of the language. The idea that mistakes generally get accepted as correct is simply untrue, which is what you are implying.

I am sure people will make the mistake, as they sometimes do today. But it is a mistake, and will likely be recognised as one.

It is likely that the language gets more cemented by automatic spelling and grammatical correction, including using AI. For example, there are a number of grammatical and spelling changes that have been cemented by American spelling/grammar checking programmes ie. by MS Word.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#150

Post by abletonlive »

milesrout wrote: post #149
abletonlive wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's not an absurd take at all. The absurd take is that we "should not bend language around ignorance." That's precisely how language changes over time. Language is not a strict set of rules. It's based on understanding and consensus, so sometimes things that are "wrong" do end up being accepted. I suggest this as a great introduction into what languages are and how they evolve over time https://www.amazon.c…

Most mistakes remain mistakes, and do not become part of the language. The idea that mistakes generally get accepted as correct is simply untrue, which is what you are implying. I am sure people will make the mistake, as they sometimes do today. But it is a mistake, and will likely be recognised as one. It is likely that the language gets more cemented by automatic spelling and grammatical correction, including using…

> The idea that mistakes generally get accepted as correct is simply untrue, which is what you are implying.

I did not imply that at all. I said sometimes, so it's not that absurd that it could happen. It does happen though, and a quick google search will give you pages of examples.

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